Disclaimer - I don't, and have never claimed to, own Marvel or its Intellectual Property. This is all just so that I can take my maladaptive daydreaming and turn it into something so that it does not ruin the rest of my day.
DoorMan #45
Lagos, Nigeria[February 3, 2008]
–Colin Baxter–
"I've hacked into the car as well as all the devices in it. Accessing Location history on the phones. We have audio but they are not speaking at the moment. The driver is local and they don't have any security personnel with them." Shuri informed him while he kept an eye on the surroundings.
"Makes sense. They wouldn't want to draw any more attention to this. Any leads on the possible clientele?" He asked as he paced on the rooftop, watching Shuri do her magic as screens paced past her display at a dizzying pace, only visible to him because he was a literal superhuman at this point.
"Not yet. There have been a number of arrivals, through both legal as well as illegal routes of foreign individuals with a high net worth but they are far too many to go through individually, and at this point, I have 60 of them on the move, with about two dozen of them coming in this direction."
He muttered, "Right. This is the shopping district." Then, he stopped pacing and asked Shuri, "What about the building? It is in a prime location and they have somehow kept it sealed off without any ongoing work. Look for the owner."
"Already done. It is a building owned by a number of companies, all tracing back to multiple shell companies, eventually leading to a holding in the Caribbean. That's as far as the trail goes. I can find the owner but it will take time and it might alert them." Shuri shrugged.
He sighed in frustration and nearly snapped at her, "Aren't you supposed to have data like this stored somewhere already? I thought you guys ran surveillance on the entire world."
Shuri deadpanned at him, "We don't go around looking for every tax dodging individual, and who they are. If we did that, we would run out of people. That is not important for Wakanda."
He sheepishly muttered, "Right." Why would Wakanda care about outside tax laws, tax dodging, and tax criminals?
"Well then, it would seem there is nothing we can do but wait." He muttered as he reached through the mental link and hit a wall. He cursed internally. The wall was flimsy and he could break through at a moment's notice but that was not the point. Jin'Ya had warned him that unless there was a genuine emergency, he wished to be with the person whom he was meeting.
Jin'Ya would have been a great help here because doing targeted mental searches was within reach of Jin'Ya without contaminating his soul, but alas, the Dragon was on a date and it rarely happened so he was not about to disturb the man for something he could accomplish on his own.
Doubly so now that he has some sense of a backup with him, even if he could not really trust her 100%. He hoped that Shuri, grown up and exposed to the ugliness of the world, would have a much more mature worldview and would know that sometimes, there are no good or bad choices, only things that are necessary. Killian had to die. There was no way he could imprison Killian indefinitely. The man knew way too much about Extremis.
Maya was another thing entirely. Her goal was different from Killian's. It would be way easier to just give her whatever money and equipment she needed, and a lab on the Red Hearth, where she would be suitably isolated from the world, sparing her from certain death, something he would no doubt be bringing up during their inevitable encounter.
The reports in SHIELD also indicated a substantial security crew along with three other scientists who worked with Maya. The others were probably moles for their respective investors and knew just as much as Maya. Now, damage was already done because the data on Extremis, however incomplete and faulty it might be, was already out there but so was the data on dozens of other failed programs.
The baseline data was gone but that was not important for now. Now, he needed to deal with all the scientists and take the person who has the best chance at making Extremis a reality, out of the game altogether. He was sure that if Maya was given the chance to work on her serum without any requirement to weaponize it, in exchange for getting to live, she would take it.
"What's this?" He looked back as Shuri seemed to have found something. Noticing his gaze, she did something that changed the holidisplay. His eyes widened as he saw the structure of the building they were standing on. The feed showed the building structure, the 3 basement parking lots and beneath that was a thick concrete floor and after that were another two floors full of movement.
"What the hell?" He asked as he took a closer look and saw what seemed like dozens of people moving about in a giant enclosed space.
"The city has no records about that space. I am unable to find any activity on the grid that would suggest a large operation. No wind currents, no parking history, no coordinated security or supplies transportation. Nothing." Shuri rattled off as a feed showed Killian and Maya being just minutes away from the building.
His brows furrowed as he saw them enter through one of the back exits and go straight down, to the last basement parking. "Come on, let's go," He said as he turned invisible and jumped off the building, controlling his descent using his Air Doors. In the beginning, the impact of something small abruptly digging into his body was painful but now it was negligible.
"What's the plan?" He heard through the small comms that Shuri gave him since they needed to maintain silence and Shuri could speak from inside the suit and he could speak from inside the skull mask to maintain complete silence.
"We need to get inside the floor. I can spoof the motion sensors as well, can you?"
"I am not getting any signal inside the building. I am trying to trace the data paths of the entire island through the internet exchange centre nearby. Once I am in, I can do pretty much anything we need. It looks like a closed loop facility and with how many people are in the space, most of it must be automated." Shuri informed him as they manoeuvred through the empty spaces and began descending into the empty parking lots.
Both of them landed without any noise as the car dropped them and left the parking lot, leaving just Killian and Hansen standing alone in the parking lot.
Both of them seemed anxious but Maya seemed more so, plus Killian was the only one who had a gun on him.
"Should we take them right now?" Shuri asked him and it was a valid question. It was a great opportunity to extract the Doctor from the situation and kill Aldrich and be done with it.
But… "No, we need to know what's in the facility as well."
"I thought so. The fibre traces should be done in a few minutes. I have confirmed no wireless operations for the facility so the connection must be coming from somewhere and it is a lot harder to track fiber data connections than it is to track electricity." Shuri explained to him even as he kept an eye on the criminal duo.
They were just standing there, looking around, waiting for someone or something to happen.
"Any movements from the floors? Can you do a deeper scan? See if there is any entry/exit point. They must be coming and going from somewhere."
"None. Actually. It is all just a thick concrete box below us. No discernible entry points. Wait! We have cars incoming." Shuri said and just after a minute or so, the sound of tires screeching echoed throughout the building as multiple blacked out SUVs came rolling in. HIs eyes widened as dozens of armed people exited the cars and gestured for Aldrich and Maya to enter the cars. They complied and he and Shuri were left watching as the parking lot was empty once more.
"Shit!" He cursed as he slowly floated behind them. He would have to come back later on to figure out what this giant underground space was but for now, Extremis was the priority. It had the potential to do much more damage, especially once the procedure was disseminated to the rest of the world.
They didn't even have to work, to have super soldiers. No, even the defective ones in canon, that created what were essentially suicide bombers. Even those would fetch a pretty penny on the market because it was potential for super soldiers and in the meantime, they got undetected suicide bombs, a wet dream for terrorist organisations.
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